The Meteor tore across the front of the 234, missing it by a few feet. Kruze had only the most fleeting impression of a camouflaged blur shooting past his eyes before the shock waves from Fleming’s high speed pass hit him and he wrestled with the stick to keep the Arado under control.
He increased power to his good engine in a bid to put as much distance between himself and the Soviet fighter with which he thought he had just had the near miss. Kruze could not afford to put his damaged plane into aerial combat. By the time the fighter found him again, if its pilot could at all, he would be those few vital kilometres nearer the HQ.
Just over a minute to target.
Fleming looked back and saw the Arado staying resolutely on course. Kruze was like an automaton, totally locked into the world of his cockpit. His warning had gone unheeded and there had only been time for one. The Rhodesian was almost at Branodz. Fleming pulled the Meteor round for one final pass.
Malenkoy almost swerved the jeep off the road when he caught sight of the aircraft coming in low across the valley towards him. He slewed to a stop, fumbled for his field glasses, and brought them up to his face, his hands shaking. He couldn’t see any markings, but it had to be a German.
The Russians had no aircraft like the propellerless one he had just seen and he doubted whether they had pressed any captured ones into service.
Although it was some way off, he could see from the way the aircraft yawed from side to side that the pilot was in some difficulty; he also saw the massive bombs slung under the pylons on the engine pods and knew immediately that he was heading for Branodz, little more than five kilometres from his position.
Branodz, home to Konev’s HQ, adjacent to the corral that held the missing Berezniki consignment.
Malenkoy pulled the flare pistol but from under the dashboard and pointed it over the tops of the trees. His finger was poised over the trigger, when he saw the other aircraft hurtle over the top of the valley just behind the German. He looked through the binoculars and saw the markings. It was British! He never asked himself what the RAF was doing in that sector. It offered salvation and that was enough. He threw the flare pistol to the floor, thankful that he wasn’t reduced to such a desperate warning. He saw the British pilot drawing up behind the fascist, the whine of their engines growing in his ears. Pinpoints of light flickered in the nose of the British fighter, then the rumble of the cannons rolled across the valley floor. But the tracer missed, the four thin lines of phosphor-tipped shells whistling past the cockpit of the German. The Arado pushed down lower, followed by the Meteor until both aircraft seemed to brush the flat ground. The fighter fired again and Malenkoy watched, horrified, as the burst rippled past the other side of the aircraft. It was as if the British pilot did not want to strike the bomber, as if he was trying to issue a warning…
As the two aircraft shot past his position, Malenkoy saw the bomber jink to avoid the tracer. Then the German’s rudder seemed to flutter momentarily like a rag in the wind before it broke away completely from the tail. The Arado dropped away behind a cluster of trees and the Meteor pulled up and away from the ground.
The Russian threw the jeep into gear and set off at top speed for the crash site, one eye on the place where he had seen the Arado go in.
Kruze fought the Arado with every fibre of his being to prevent it from hitting the trees. With the last of his strength, he pulled back on the stick and felt the tops of the pines scrape the aircraft, then his eyes scouted for some flat, open ground for the belly-landing.
He hit the release buttons for the two remaining bombs and they tumbled away to bury themselves deep in the ground, exploding three seconds later in an incandescent orange fireball. The shock waves radiated outwards, catching the Arado as he brought it down to earth, the red-hot shrapnel cutting through the cockpit, puncturing his thigh, his side.
He cried out with the pain as the Perspex shattered in front of him and the hard, frozen earth tore through the cockpit, hitting his body and cutting his face. He threw his hands up for the final conflagration that would blow him to pieces as the fuel tanks went up and then all was still.
Fleming circled the smoking wreckage at two hundred feet. He had watched in horror, first as Kruze’s rudder had broken away from the tail, then in awe as the Rhodesian wrestled with the controls to bring the jet into a belly-landing. The huge explosions seemed to end it all, but it wasn’t the Arado that had gone up, merely the bombs that had dropped from their racks just before the plane went in.
Well-aimed bursts had narrowly missed the Arado, but Kruze had taken no notice of his warning shots. The Rhodesian had tried to outmanoeuvre his attempts to shepherd him away from his bomb-run into Branodz, but it was the Arado’s frail airframe that was finally overcome.
As the dust settled over the scrubland of the Arado’s last resting place, his eyes followed the trail of broken metal and engine components until they fastened on the fuselage, which by some miracle was still in one piece. And there had been no fire, only thick, acrid smoke swirling up into the still air.
He pulled the Meteor down for a low pass over the cockpit, afraid of what he would see inside.
The hatch fell off the top of the cabin and the smoke billowed out. In its midst, he saw Kruze pull himself on to the top of the fuselage. He seemed to be clutching his side. Fleming couldn’t stop himself from crying out when he saw the Rhodesian inch himself to the ground and stagger away from the wreckage.
Through the dust and the smoke, Kruze heard the sound overhead. He looked up and saw the Meteor, its red, white and blue roundels clearly visible, despite the swirling clouds that belched from the Arado’s cockpit. He thought he was dreaming, but the roar of the jets as the plane swept low across the ground confirmed that he wasn’t.
The knowledge that it was the RAF that had finally prevented him from reaching his target cut through the pain. The Meteor was coming round again. The engines were throttled right back, the hood was open and he could see the pilot, waving, no, pointing to the trees.
The pilot was Fleming.
Kruze saw him clearly. There was no mistake. At first he tried to fight it, then he saw it all. Fleming hadn’t been trying to shoot him down. He had been warning him off, trying to steer him away from Branodz. And then he no longer cared why it was Robert who had brought him down, or that he had failed to get to Archangel. Fleming was up there and it all seemed to fit. Their lives had come together and the bond had continued, unbroken, in spite of his attempts to cast himself loose from him, from Penny. He had played with fire, basked in its glow for those few short days, and then tried to put it out. Now the fire raged in him, burning him right down to his soul.
He fell to the ground, the pain too much to let him stand. Fleming was circling overhead, his arm hanging from the open cockpit, buffeted by the slipstream, still indicating the way to the nearest belt of trees. Kruze knew that he was showing him the path to escape, away from the Russian patrols that would be there within a few minutes. But he couldn’t move any more. He didn’t want to. Come on, Robert, finish me off.
Fleming shouted out as Kruze seemed to fall back on the ground. There were tears of frustration in his eyes.